Wednesday, October 15, 2014

CD Review: Mostly Other People Do the Killing - Blue

I once attended a local jazz competition, where three groups were competing for different packages of studio time and the cost of a CD pressing. One of the group consisted of four (maybe five) guys, who looked to be around the age of undergraduates, give or take a year. They knew the ins and outs of their instruments and it showed in their demeanor, which for a few of them bordered on cocksure, especially the bass player, who donned shades even in the darkness of the club.

They opened their set with Dave Brubeck's "Blue Rondo a la Turk." No simple task - especially when you consider how hard it can be to breath during that tune while blowing the saxophone - they nailed it, tightly recreating Brubeck's original arrangement. After doing the alternating 9/8 and 4/4 sections, the saxophonist and pianist probably played their own solos rather than recreating what Brubeck and Paul Desmond played on the original recording. But by that point, it didn't really matter. The guys had achieved their goal: they showed their roots and they showed their facility. And really, that's why anyone would play "Blue Rondo a la Turk." It's not a blowing vehicle. ("Take Five" presents more of a challenge that way, and that's even more of a crowd-pleaser in a general sense.)

On one level, it was impressive, and it was clear these guys had spent a great deal of time practicing and working together as a unit. But on the other hand - what's the point? It's almost better to play the theme of "Now's the Time," a much simpler melody, and show what you can do over blues changes (the same type of changes used in the solo section of "Blue Rondo" anyway).

Mostly Other People Do the Killing are known as jazz provocateurs, paying homage to their forefathers as they spoof the seriousness of jazz. Their early albums recreated cover art of classics by the Jazz Messengers, Ornette Coleman and Roy Haynes. The liner notes, often attributed to one Leonard Featherweight (and actually penned by the band's bassist and mastermind Moppa Elliot) play along straight-faced, sometimes taking the joke a tad too far, which has both amused and bugged me. When covering the iconic "A Night in Tunisia" drummer Kevin Shea not only referenced Art Blakey's drum licks but the entire history of drum solos, up through Led Zeppelin's John Bonham, with a little disco thrown in too, if I remember correctly.

But beyond the shtick, the band cooks, to borrow a phrase Featherweight, or Leonard Feather, might use. Elliot is a sharp composer who, throughout the band's first six albums, has penned music that picks up where Ornette Coleman left off, took inspiration from '20s and 30s' jazz and even claimed to honor smooth jazz on one album (it didn't, literally, but it was a strong album). Yes, irony seems to be a factor, even though they stated their cover of Billy Joel's "Allentown" was both sincere and in keeping with Elliot's early habit of naming songs after city's in his native Pennsylvania. (I'm still waiting for "Pittsburgh," Moppa.)

After all the big projects they've tackled, it seems like the logical next step would be to take on an iconic album. And what better album is there to tackle than Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, which routinely appears at the top of lists of great jazz albums? And what would be more audacious than to play the album note for note, exactly the way Miles, John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Bill Evans, Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb played it in 1959? The MOPDtK quartet - Elliot, Shea, trumpeter Peter Evans, saxophonist Jon Irabagon - plus pianist Ron Stabinsky did just that.

Somewhere, I read that the band has gone so far as to recreate the tape hiss of the originals. I haven't geeked out enough to check to see if they pitched the "side one" portion of the album a half-step faster, as all releases of Kind of Blue did until the '90s, but I am curious. They do effectively capture the warm echo of Columbia's 30th Street Studios.

They do it to a T. No surprises in the fadeouts. No crazy horn squonks. No drum splatters from Shea. Hell, I even wondered if they'd recreate the false start of "Freddie Freeloader," where one of them would use the Miles rasp on Stabinsky, "Don't play no chord on the a-flat." Nope.

This album is pissing off a lot of people. A few days ago, someone on Facebook went so far as to say the estates of the original performers should sue because their solos are being recreated without royalties. Others are saying, "Why bother?"

The answer - to make a statement. Jazz has been called "America's classical music," and classical music is played the same way each time, in most situations. So no one should be surprised when jazz is played the same way. (I haven't even delved into the liner notes, a fake scholarly article by Spanish writer Jorge Luis Borges, which metaphorically explains an author's rewriting of Cervantes' Don Quixote.)

All around the country there are aspiring jazz musicians who think of Kind of Blue as jazz's brass ring and devote themselves to learning it inside out. Or maybe they're figuring out "Blue Rondo a la Turk." Where do you go after that? Does that prepare you for the jazz world? Elliot and the gang seem to be saying "no."

Maybe this album is a wake-up call, not just to those students (Elliot is a teacher) but to jazz musicians and critics everywhere. If we put jazz on a shelf, this is what we're going to wind up with eventually - something that sounds great, feels great but that ultimately sounds the same as what we've heard before. There's nothing wrong with learning an album backwards and forwards, but it's not a means to an end. (On a side note, I'd venture to say that if somebody attempted to learn an album like Andrew Hill's Point of Departure or Eric Dolphy's Out to Lunch inside out, methinks that musician would probably come away with some of their own new ideas about how to play music. But that's a debate for another day.)

Some records deserve the highest credit (you know - five stars) due to their mere existence, either for the message they send or for their audacity. (My favorite example is here.) I'm not ready to give MOPDtK such praise. The album just came out yesterday, after all. Special kudos should be given to Jon Irabagon, however, because he has the formidable task of playing both Coltrane and Cannonball's solos, one of which must have been overdubbed to achieve such a seamless flow.

But the band deserves credit for have the guts to make that statement. Blue was released by Hot Cup, Elliot's own label, so no one can grouse about some label ignoring aspiring musicians in favor of this. He's putting his money where his mouth is. Further, this is just one dot on the MOPDtK map, of which there have already been several, with more to come.

Long may you run, Mr. Elliot. You and the guys never cease to impress me, even when I feel like some of the stuff you do goes a little too far.

Although you should've given Bill Evans co-writing credit for "Blue in Green."

4 comments:

Works from classical music at not the same every time. They're different with each performance, but it's a question of degrees. A work is *relatively* the same each time.

One difference between classical music and jazz (using generalized terms for such things) is the emphasis on composer and interpreter. In classical music, the composer is supreme and it's the interpreter's job to realize the composer's ideas given the information provided in the score. In jazz, the interpreter starts to become primary. The composer is important (players need good material) but the improvisational performance is what becomes essential. The onus is on the player at least as much as the composer. Note Monk's "Children's Song", a take on "This Old Man". Neutral material, but it unleashes something in the players that make it worth listening to. Great musicians can lift banal sources. But a bad Mozart symphony (I've heard them) is bad no matter how passionately played.

So....this album. I haven't listened to it. Frankly, I'm not interested. The conceit is that "Kind of Blue" can be recreated. So what (no pun intended)! KOB in its original form exists specifically as a recorded document. It was an album. That band played live fewer than ten times. (Side note: my father saw one of those gigs.) Recreating it starts to sound like Supersax arrangements of Bird solos. It's material, it's a challenge, but does it really go anywhere? I argue, no. This album is rather like the "Psycho" remake which is take-for-take like the original, just in color with different actors. So what.

Works from classical music at not the same every time. They're different with each performance, but it's a question of degrees. A work is *relatively* the same each time.

One difference between classical music and jazz (using generalized terms for such things) is the emphasis on composer and interpreter. In classical music, the composer is supreme and it's the interpreter's job to realize the composer's ideas given the information provided in the score. In jazz, the interpreter starts to become primary. The composer is important (players need good material) but the improvisational performance is what becomes essential. The onus is on the player at least as much as the composer. Note Monk's "Children's Song", a take on "This Old Man". Neutral material, but it unleashes something in the players that make it worth listening to. Great musicians can lift banal sources. But a bad Mozart symphony (I've heard them) is bad no matter how passionately played.

So....this album. I haven't listened to it. Frankly, I'm not interested. The conceit is that "Kind of Blue" can be recreated. So what (no pun intended)! KOB in its original form exists specifically as a recorded document. It was an album. That band played live fewer than ten times. (Side note: my father saw one of those gigs.) Recreating it starts to sound like Supersax arrangements of Bird solos. It's material, it's a challenge, but does it really go anywhere? I argue, no. This album is rather like the "Psycho" remake which is take-for-take like the original, just in color with different actors. So what.

Ben - Thanks for the comments. I'm not sure why it showed up twice. But anyhow - the one thing a few people have pointed out to me is my mistakes in what I said about classical music. In retrospect I kind of understated how it is performed. And of course some pieces have improvisation written in, so to speak. But I think you summed it up really well.

As far as what "Blue" really is, I think it's more of a "statement" than anything else: a prediction of where jazz could be headed, albeit an exaggerated one. There are some rather rabid comments on FB now where people seem to have missed the point. They think MOPDtK is a bunch of college kids who consider themselves hot S**t because they can play KOB note for note. (One person quibbled, "the timing is off in the piano intro of 'All Blues,' and there's no blues there." Zheesh.) In fact, I think there is some mockery going on here. Does that make for a good listen? Eh.The big question here, though, is your dad seeing that band. what did he have to say about it?

Great review, thought provoking. I guess I'd prefer mild homage to total recreation, although I always admired Phish for having the ability and perseverance to recreate (but in a different way?) various albums.

I'm what you'd call a music enthusiast. Not one of those obsessive people, but definitely fanatical about it. This blog began as a forum for whatever I am listening to throughout the day but I'm also trying to include full-blown CD reviews too.

About Me

UPDATED - 9/15/2018. Over the past couple years, most of the entries here have been focused on jazz, with fewer on indie rock or albums from my past that I've dug up. I'm not limiting myself to one style. But most of the music I receive is jazz and since there aren't a whole lot of jazz writers out there, I try to provide a forum for it. Regarding me, I've lived in Pittsburgh all my life and despise the people who live here who put it down because it says less about the town than it does about them. Until recently, I played bass and sang in a band called the Love Letters, who released a double 7" single. (Something else is sort of in the works but I'll keep you posted.) Prior to that, I played in Amoeba Knievel, the Fearnots and the Mofones. Previously I played in Bone of Contention (ever heard "Barbie Likes to Die"? People on the interweb have!), the Pundits, Paul Lynde 451 and Mystery Date. After several years of freelancing for Pittsburgh City Paper, I now write for the new Pittsburgh Current, which everyone should check out online or in print. Nationally I contribute to JazzTimes magazine.